Monday, August 30, 2010

Week Two, Initialize!

Week two began, with few hiccups. I can safely say that my day of marathon teaching went well, aside from the fact that many of my students either didn't know there was a homework assignment due today, or they couldn't FIND it online. ::face palm:: I made it as clear as possible today, I even showed them the website where they can get all their assignments, and much much more. So, I'm hoping no excuses next week.

I must be one or more of the above: evil, scary, or I smell bad. It has to be at least one of these things, because I had many absences today, and I've had at least four people drop my class in two weeks. Two were today, from the same section, sort of just abruptly as I was handing them the quiz and getting going with the laboratory. Either it is me, or is a glorious example of how not having the lab book to a lab class makes you feel horribly unprepared.

I really need to work on the time management in my class, particularly my first section of the day. By the time my third section comes around, I have a handle on how long different tasks are going to take, but my poor first section are the guinea pigs. It seems like there is too much housekeeping type stuff in the beginning, so it takes forever to get to the actual lab exercises. Even today, when I felt like I was rushing through stuff with my first group, we only barely finished. Then I realized as we were finishing up that I had forgotten something. Argh! Next week, I'm going to get a grip on this!

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In other news: I found out today that my adviser, Felisa Smith, is going to be on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". She'll have an excerpt in the "Bluff the Listener" game, where a person calls in, has ridiculous "news" clips read to them, and they have to guess which one is real. Once the show airs, I'll find the archived episode and provide a link here. This is beyond awesome!

This is the story of finishing my master's thesis at Penn State and moving to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque to start, and hopefully complete, a PhD. It's a major change and a huge adjustment and I'll be documenting my successes, mistakes, musings, triumphs, and tragedies.

About Me

Throughout my master's degree, I witnessed my friends with their PhDs, suffering immensely. I decided in the 11th hour of my thesis that I wanted to join them. To that end, I moved to Albuquerque to attend the University of New Mexico in fall 2010. That means I moved away from friends and family on the east coast for adventures out in the southwest. Temporary moment of insanity? Nah.
I'm a paleoecologist, which means I study fossils to understand long term ecological trends in earth's history. My current research is on the last ice age, specifically, changes in climate and associated effects on biota.